Happy 16th Anniversary

Y’all know I’ve been radically absent.

Not a peep in 2022 besides the one cancer anniversary post.

I have a New Year post in my head which maybe will get posted when half the year is over.

But there are a few days I write. Always write.

Today is one of those.

My marriage turns 16 years old today. Happy sweet 16, Vincent Marriage.

Over the years, I’ve written different messages. Here on the blog and in a little book I keep just for Bray and in cards and on social media.

We’ve had crazy hard years and sublime years. Good marriage years that were bad everything else years and vice versa.

We were all joking around after dinner a couple of evenings ago, because there’s another school dance coming up tonight, and little bit was listing what she wants in a husband. Thankfully, she started with the fact that she wanted him to be a Christian but it was quickly followed by being a cowboy, funny and hot!

Ha! Well, I quickly retorted, I got lucky because your dad is HOT! I still think he’s hot over 18 years after I met him.

They of course went on about how gross we are.

This makes me enormously happy.

I still love to kiss him every single day. He makes me laugh. He deals with my utter and complete insanity – seriously I’m a very structured control freak that he manages to live with every single day. And still be relatively sane.

We’ve survived triplets and cancer and hurricanes and job losses and transitions and aging us and everyone around us and now three middle schoolers in the throws of all that is middle school.

But this year comes with some trepidation for me too. It was in my parents 16th year of marriage that it exploded. Big exploded. With all the collateral damage that comes with a big marriage breaking apart in a small town with the charismatic preacher. Financial ruin. Extended separation between kids and parent. Moving across states.

I was 12.

So it would be a total failure on my part if I wasn’t evaluating what all that means for me emotionally in this 16th year of my marriage when my kids also happen to be 12.

One of the things I did was I talked to Bray about it. And I’ll keep talking about it. Because we’re actually better communicators now than we were even five years ago. Saying something out loud helps me to keep from worrying or obsessing about it.

We’ll keep doing the things that are good about our marriage. We still go on dates. We still kiss and say I love every single day. We’re more honest about what’s happening in the kids lives and in their circles than we ever were because the implications are greater now.

We mess up all the time too. I’m pretty spendy and he’s a saver so you can imagine those discussion. While we have navigated those differences (and some other really big political differences) over the years, we have to keep talking about it before it turns into a painful fight.

But mainly, on this gorgeous May 6th, when I look back at the years we have fashioned a life together, I’m overwhelmingly thankful. Thankful to still be in love, to have made it to our sweet 16, and to have so many adventures to look forward to over the next 16 years.

I love you babe.